ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

This study went through over 1,600 marginal and end comments written on 110 first drafts of essays by 47 university ESL advanced students, considering both the pragmatic goals for and the linguistic features of each comment. After this, drafts of each individual essay were examined to observe the influence of the first draft commentary on the students' revisions and assess whether the changes that were made in response to the teacher's feedback actually improved the essays. The author thinks that a really significant proportion of the comments led to substantive student revision, and that there were particular types or kinds and forms of commentary that were more helpful than other commentaries. The final results are suggestive of several important implications for L2 writing instruction and for future studies on a vital but surprisingly neglected topic.

REDUCTION

This study tried 1,600 marginal and end comments written on 110 drafts of essays by 47 university ESL students, considering the pragmatic goals and linguistic features of comments. Then, the drafts of the essays were examined to observe the influence of these commentaries on the students' revisions and asses whether the changes that were made in response to the teacher's feedback improved the essays. (3)The author thinks that a big proportion of comments led to students revision, and that existed particular kinds and forms of commentary that were more helpful than others. (4) The results are suggestive of several important implications for L2 writing future studies about on surprisingly neglected topic.